Good morning, and welcome to a new week. President Trump urged House Republicans to back a measure to release the Epstein files, a sharp reversal from his previous stance. And federal agents in Charlotte, N.C., arrested more than 80 people in a crackdown on illegal immigration. Plus, the Philadelphia Eagles’ defense smothered the Detroit Lions to win 16-9. More on what’s happening in our world is below. Before we get to it, though, I’d like to take you to Washington, where The Times has been trying to understand what’s going on in the Justice Department.
A chaotic yearPresident Trump’s second term has been difficult for the nation’s most powerful law enforcement agency. The administration has taken away safeguards that protected the agency from political influence. Trump officials have directed criminal investigations that would usually have nothing to do with the White House. They’ve ignored ethics rules and told attorneys to drop cases. They’ve fired hundreds of career attorneys. Thousands more have resigned. The department’s culture of independence and impartiality has shattered. My colleagues Emily Bazelon and Rachel Poser wanted to know what it was like inside the institution as all that happened. It wasn’t an easy question to answer. Attorneys at the Justice Department are generally nonpartisan career public servants: backstagers rather than stars. They rarely speak to the press. They’re also fearful of the Trump administration’s crackdown on leaks — and leakers. One said attorneys in the agency had sound machines at their desks because they were convinced people were listening to them. The fired attorneys, though, and those who resigned? Emily and Rachel spoke to more than 60 of them. And what they learned was revelatory, if challenged sharply by officials at the department itself: “This story is a useless collection of recycled, debunked hearsay from disgruntled former employees,” a spokeswoman wrote The Times in an email. “Targeting the department’s political leadership while ignoring the questionable conduct of former attorneys who do not have the American people’s best interest at heart shows exactly how biased this story is.” So noted. Emily and Rachel pointed to several highlights from their interviews. ‘The way we did investigations drastically changed.’ Lawyers in the department’s Civil Rights Division were told in March to investigate schools in the University of California system for antisemitism and employment discrimination. Multiple teams went to Berkeley, U.C.L.A., U.C. Davis and U.C.S.F.
Here’s Ejaz Baluch, a lawyer in the Civil Rights Division: The only school, it became clear, where there might be a violation was U.C.L.A. One colleague said, “We have to feed something to the wolves.” The team concluded that the complaint process at the school was broken. Some professors we interviewed really did suffer on campus. They were harassed by groups of students. But the D.O.J. demand letter to U.C.L.A. asked for $1 billion in damages. We thought, $1 billion? They are making that up out of thin air. There is no way the damages we found added up to anything like that amount. ‘Our job was to find the facts that would fit the narrative that the administration already had.’ In March, Trump issued an executive order punishing elite law firms that had performed legal work for Democrats or helped investigate the president’s ties to Russia and his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. The order accused the law firm Perkins Coie of “dishonest and dangerous activity” and racial discrimination. Trump directed federal agencies to terminate the firm’s government contracts. Dena Robinson, a lawyer in the Civil Rights Division, recalled: The idea of the investigation was that Perkins Coie supposedly engaged in illegal discrimination against white men. But Perkins Coie is an extremely white firm — only 3 percent of the partners are Black. When my colleague pointed that out, the leadership didn’t care. They’d already reached their conclusion. They continued instructing my colleague to just find the evidence for it.
‘It was strongly suggested to me that Mel Gibson is someone who had a personal relationship with the president.’ In March, Liz Oyer, then the pardon attorney at the Justice Department, was fired after she declined to recommend restoring gun rights to the actor Mel Gibson, who was convicted of a misdemeanor domestic-violence charge in 2011. She told Emily and Rachel: Mel Gibson has a history of domestic violence, and I’m well aware from my experience and training that it is very dangerous for a person with a domestic-violence history to possess a firearm. As attorney general, Bondi has the power to restore rights without my blessing. My recommendation was sought, I believe, to give a veneer of legitimacy to what was actually a political favor for a friend of the president. ‘It’s unprecedented to shift resources away from national security to this degree.’ In May, F.B.I. officials ordered field offices to devote a third of their time to immigration enforcement. That meant pulling back on important investigations. A prosecutor in the D.C. metro area said: Virginia and D.C. have the most important offices for counterterrorism and espionage. We get cases from the Middle East, long and complex investigations of terrorist threats from abroad and also domestically. In the Eastern District, there were 12 to 14 lawyers in the national security unit and now there are four, with no deputy or chief. In D.C., the national security unit is down about 50 percent. I was recently on the floor where F.B.I. agents work on domestic terrorism and it was completely hollowed out.
‘They didn’t want to return gifts, they didn’t want to not accept gifts, whatever the source.’ In July, Pam Bondi, the attorney general, fired the Justice Department’s top ethics adviser, Joseph Tirrell. He told Emily and Rachel about briefing Bondi on the rules about accepting gifts as a federal employee and said that disagreements over ethics rules became a “recurring theme” with her office: We got a request about some cigars from Conor McGregor and a soccer ball from FIFA. And I felt like I really had to go to the mattress to convince the A.G.’s office: You can pay for the item or you can return the item or you can throw the item away. There’s no other way to do this. There’s a lot more where that came from, so I hope you’ll read the whole article. Now, let’s get you caught up.
The Epstein Files
Immigration
More on Politics
Crypto
International
Other Big Stories
“I never expect this in America”: Three immigrants who entered the United States legally share the stories of their brutal detention in a video. Americans wrongly believe that Nazis pursued Jews as a race first. That lesson, Jochen Hellbeck writes, obfuscates fascism and authoritarianism’s ultimate target: the political left. The Times Sale: Our best rate for readers of The Morning. Save now with our best offer on unlimited news and analysis as part of the complete Times experience: $1/week for your first year.
A pill for women’s libido? One woman’s business is booming. Ken Burns: His 12-hour documentary about our national origin story is landing in the middle of a culture war. Yes, it’s complicated. Metropolitan Diary: Hold my coffee. A second career: Homayoun Ershadi, who died at 78, was an architect with no training as an actor whose life was changed by a chance encounter. His performances, including in “The Kite Runner” and “Taste of Cherry,” inspired rave reviews and a New Yorker short story.
$561— That was the cost of a room at the Country Inn & Suites in Tallahassee, Fla., on the weekend Florida State University’s football team played Virginia Tech. It was $96 the previous weekend.
N.F.L.: Jalen Ramsey was ejected for throwing a punch at the Bengals vs. Steelers game. The Broncos won their eighth straight by beating the Chiefs. And the Rams took the top of the NFC West over the Seahawks. Women’s soccer: Gotham F.C. beat the Orlando Pride to secure their spot in the N.W.S.L. championship, where they will play the Washington Spirit. Men’s tennis: Jannik Sinner won the ATP Tour Finals title over Carlos Alcaraz.
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